“Good question. Try to be a little bit quiet, would you? I’ll check out the guy’s computer.” Quinn strode off.
A little bit quiet, my ass, Forrest thought. So vigorously that he worked up a sweat, he dumped all the kitchen drawers, then pillaged the countertop and cupboards, all without finding anything useful. Where the hell did this guy keep his papers and bills? Forrest hadn’t seen anything that could serve as a desk in the living room or bedrooms.
Close enough behind him to make him jump, Quinn bleated, “I can’t find any computer. What kind of person does not have a computer?”
Enjoying the novelty of being in a foul and masterful mood, Forrest shot back, “What do you think I am, an FBI profiler? Probably a gun-toting redneck. Come on.” He headed for the living room, where he hurled hard rectangular cushions off the Spartan furniture, then overturned it. He found nothing of interest in or underneath any of it. Kneeling, he yanked open the TV stand and pulled out video after video, most of them Walt Disney productions, from The Lion King all the way back to Pinocchio.
“Jiminy Cricket,” remarked Quinn, eyebrows raised, “no DVDs? This guy is stuck in the dark ages.”
Forrest stood up with clenched fists. “Bedroom,” he ordered between his teeth, and Quinn actually followed him in there. He started dumping dresser drawers onto the bed.
Peering at a shadowy corner of the hot and airless room, Quinn asked, “What’s that?”
Forrest looked up from a pile of no-longer-white tube socks balled into pairs. By now his eyes had pretty much adjusted to the indoor gloom. Along with Quinn he studied a remarkably ugly gray metal furnishing bigger than a filing cabinet but not large enough to hang clothing in. “Beats me. Open it.”
Quinn went over and tried to do so. “Locked.”
“Look around for a key.” Forrest kept emptying drawers, but with diminishing enthusiasm as he came across ripped jeans, T-shirts crusty under the armpits, graying underwear with stains that hadn’t washed out.
“Where would you be if you were a key?” Quinn asked—rhetorically, Forrest hoped. Jeez, could it really be? The Suit, down on hands and knees checking the lower surfaces of furniture, ruining his expensive trousers?
Forrest pulled open the dresser’s bottom drawer and yelped, jumping back as if the things in there were live snakes. “Quinn, come here!”
Just behind his shoulder Quinn drawled, “Whatsa matter, little brother, you scared of sex toys?”
“Startled me. Ick! What’s this guy been doing?”
Somewhat to Forrest’s mortification, Quinn stepped past him, took hold of the drawer, and dumped it. Riding crops and other whips, cane switches and leather straps, handcuffs, red thong underwear, and the like looked no less icky when displayed upon stained whitey tighties.
“Gross.” Forrest stepped back. “Sick.”
“Interesting,” Quinn said. “I read someplace that the best way to hide anything small is to put it in a dildo, because nobody will want to touch it.” He picked up one.
“Ew!” Forrest protested.
“You’re wasting time. Check the vibrators.”
“You check them. I—”
“Wait a minute.” Quinn squeezed a rubbery phallic representation. “There’s something in here.” A moment later he found a slit in the item’s hollow structure and extracted a small key.
“I cannot believe you did that.” This was true. Forrest felt dazed, almost dizzy, as he followed his brother to the gray metal enigma in the corner.
“The key fits,” Quinn reported as he opened it, spreading the double doors to reveal the contents. Boxes of ammunition filled a shelf at the top. Empty rifle racks occupied the middle.
“It’s a gun safe,” Forrest said, “but where are the guns?”
“And what are all these papers?” Quinn picked up a thick stack of documents from the bottom of the gun safe and leafed through them. “Jesus Christ. They’re just the bastard’s bills, stuff like that.”
“Why would he hide them in a locked cabinet?”
“Paranoid.”
“Well, who the hell is he?”
“His name appears to be Steven Stoat.”
• • •
“Coffee?” I asked Stoat.
“Sure thing.”
“It’s just instant. In the microwave.”
“Good enough.” Rather messily enjoying his eggs, he was still in a benign mood, which had given me time to think and stiffen my own spine. Okay, Stoat the Goat claimed to have killed Justin, but why hadn’t he said so before, when I had found Justin’s Magic Marker note on the picnic table in the fishing shack? Had he been preoccupied by the snakebite? Or had he only recently fabricated Justin’s death to torment me? This seemed quite possible. But even if Justin was dead, I was still alive and needed to keep living. If only Stoat would stay human for a few minutes, I had a request. But never disturb animals when they’re eating, Mother had always told me. Patience might possibly mean survival. I had to wait.